REPORT 50 CHRISTMAS 2006
If there is a God I expect to be struck by lightning on entering His house . . .
I SEEM TO REMEMBER that last year I wrote a Christmas blog and a New
Year blog but I’m not going back to check if only on the grounds that
one should keep moving forward, eschew nostalgia, draw a line under
the past and all that. I don’t really believe it but I’m still doing
two blogs this month and this is the Christmas one. Happy Christmas to
all my readers!
Which returns me to thoughts on my blogs. I mean it’s about
self-advertisement really isn’t it?. Mine is, at least. It wouldn’t
have been possible a few years ago but the world wide net has made it
possible, changing for ever our ability to communicate with each
other.
Tim Heald
At the moment my plan is to spend Christmas Day itself at home with
Penny except for a foray to John and Twinkle Carter who have invited
us to join them for roast goose with their friends, the caviar farmers
from France. We met them on our way to my god-daughter’s wedding three
(?) years ago and I wrote a piece about them. I can’t even remember if
it got used or not but have a terrible feeling that it didn’t. However
this is not an occasion for a whinge. It’s Christmas. I hope that on
the day I shall speak to my mother in Wiltshire and my vegetarian
brother who will be visiting her; also my four children – two in or
around London, one in Miami or Mexico and one in Auckland. We seem to
be slightly depressingly dispersed but although it won’t be a family
Christmas in the accepted, old-fashioned sense I guess this is the way
of the world these days and new technology is amazing. I have even
been able to order booze for the girls over the internet from wine
merchants in their own home towns. And at least we’re all on speaking
terms! Even if only or usually on the telephone. Memo to self: I must
organise Skype so that I can cut costs even more.
I shall also take a day off work but probably not go to church not
because of guilt and agnosticism though both are powerful religious
disincentives: If there is a God I expect to be struck by lightning on
entering His house, and if there isn’t one then there’s no real point
even if I like the noise his adherents make. No, not because of either
of these but because on balance, I - and especially Mrs. Heald -
aren’t tremendously keen on the noise in God’s Fowey church.
So a rather low-key Christmas and I’ve already had my main present
which is a wonderful herringbone tweed overcoat from Magee of Donegal
and Dublin (see earlier report!)
Cue, however, for musings on Christmas and blogs. Actually I have been
asked to take part in a Norman Lebrecht natter on BBC Radio 3 on my
birthday (January 28th) next year so I suppose I ought to treat this
as a bit of a rehearsal. I know one or two people who read these
things from time to time but if my blogmaster is right there are tens
of thousands of you out there in the ether and I have little or no
idea of what you are all thinking. Tune in to Radio 3 on January 28th
– it’s live – and hear what we say.
I don’t know about Christmas really. A big part of me thinks that it
is most of all about families and small children which I do see is not
quite right doctrinally or commercially but is nevertheless how I
would respond in a word association game such as the one that Princess
Margaret used to play with her husband almost half a century ago – see
my biography when it is published by Weidenfeld next year.
This is very apparent at Christmas. For example, having decided to
send both daughters some wine I was able, by keying in “Wine Shop
Auckland” on Google to find a likely-sounding place in New Zealand,
e-mailed them, made friends with someone called John, gave him credit
card details and lo, a case was waiting on Lucy’s doorstep in Ponsonby
when she got home from work. Same in Miami though it was more
difficult to find the wine shop. The one recommended by Emma is in
Fort Lauderdale and my new friend there is called Bill. Same thing,
thanks to the miracle of e-mail I have ordered wine, dictated a
message and all is in hand. By contrast I have found the grandsons a
couple of Charles Causley books at Bookends. These have now been
suitably inscribed, wrapped and posted by Penny and will be in Florida
probably some time in the New Year. That’s the old-fashioned way.
The other Christmas custom that has been transformed by new technology
is the Christmas Card. I thought of this when I got a message from
Plaxo reminding me that Lucy’s birthday was in a week’s time and
asking if I’d like to send her an e-birthday card. I did, of course
and realised as I did that I had had several e-Christmas cards mainly
from my new friends whom I had met at El Pueblo Ingles. Some had
video-type animations involving fairies and lights, others included
personal photos of snow-covered farmhouses or whatever. We still get
old-fashioned snail-mail delivered cards but I sense that there are
fewer than usual this year and I wonder if this is because people are
switching over to electronic delivery systems. Maybe it’s just because
we’re losing popularity or all our friends are dying or becoming
incapacitated, but I don’t think it’s just that.
So we’re into a brave new e-Christmas world. Heigh-ho!
I don’t suppose any of this is particularly original, though it’s more
original than a lot of the stuff I seem to be reading at the moment.
Anyway, I’m beginning to question the merits of originality. Perhaps
it is better simply to admit that all one’s thoughts are second hand,
plagiarised and nicked from those very few individuals blessed with
the capacity for really original thought. I am bowed down by this
thought because of being in the throes of book completion, where I
think one is obliged to come up with original material expressed in an
original way and where I have that horrid feeling common I fear to all
writers at this stage of a book that everything you’ve done is not
only second-rate but second-hand. I’ve been trying draft chapters of
Princess Margaret out on one or two experts and also reading the
existing biographies. It’s leaving me very depressed.
Back to family and Christmas. I spent a day or two at my mother’s in
Wiltshire and then drove back to Cornwall through a thick pea-soup
fog. Odd weather because Wiltshire and Cornwall were bright and sunny
while Devon and Somerset were plunged in gloom. Anyway, I made a brief
detour to the village of Martock for a moment of contemplation at the
family grave. Father, aunt and uncle, grandparents, all huddled
together under the turf and uncompromising headstones, not far from
the magnificent yew avenue planted on behalf of my great-grandparents.
My mother’s family owned and ran a glove factory near here but it went
bust when people stopped wearing gloves some time in the
nineteen-thirties. I think my mother will just about squeeze in when
her time comes but then the plot will be full. My brother and I will
have to go elsewhere and the clan will scatter. I had an idea, talking
of ‘scatter’ of being cremated and sprinkled over Maiden Castle near
Dorchester where I was born. Now the children pull faces and say it
will be too much trouble, you’d need a helicopter, you’ll be dead
anyway so why bother?
Morbid thoughts perhaps but if Christmas is about family it ought,
presumably, to be about dead family as well as living. Besides which,
after a relatively young age relations who have been a real, living
part of your own life, become part of your life. History in fact.
Meanwhile however it’s here and now and I have just had a
spectacularly wonderful Christmas present. I have been asked to be
President of the local cricket club. What greater compliment could a
man wish for? I mean, forget the Garter or a peerage, presidency of
one’s local cricket club is surely the ultimate accolade. Despite the
Ashes!
And on that note, Happy Christmas. A New Year’s Message will follow
shortly!
